Nothing is Forever

Chapter 4 - Slashed - Alissa Lauren Kiang

We grab our suitcases from the trunk of the car, and go inside which wasn't in much better condition than the outside appeared to be in. The cabin looks nothing like how I remember it looking when Victor and I used to come here and stay for a while as kids. The air now smells of mildew, and rotting food, and the wall hangings are all framed animal heads that I don't remembering being there when my family and I used to come here. It kind of freaked the five of us out, that the place we were staying at looked like a house straight out of Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

"It looked so much better when we were first here. It looks like it just became a dumping ground for all of the unwanted furnishings that were taking up in the garage," Victor says, his voice dripping with disappointment. "Without people here, cleaning and occupying the place, and just here, it looks so dead and scary, and disappointing, it looks so much worse than I have ever seen it."

"Maybe we can make the most of it," Davis says, sitting on a chair, throwing the keys onto the dining table next to him, and propping his feet up. The moment his feet make contact with the table, it falls to the ground, one of the legs snapping, and a live mouse skitters across the floor, running out from underneath the dining table, and out a hole in the back door. The glass and screen door doesn't quite meet the wood of the floor and a draft comes in from the crack. The five of us all look at each other, looks of sadness, annoyance, and disappointment -that our trip had turned out so much different than we had expected- written on our faces and the five of us unanimously decide to turn around and head back home. We dejectedly load all of our stuff into the trunk, and get into the car. I grab the keys from the table where Davis had left them, and throw them to him, shutting the door behind me. Davis turns the key in the ignition, and the engine roars to life, but our truck doesn't move, it just jolts around. We get out of the car and Victor and I check the engine, even though we doubt that is the problem, as the car had sounded fine when it had been started.

"Yo guys! I think I might've found something here!" I hear Alexandra yell.

"What's up?" I question, walking over to where she's standing. She moves her hand and points at the wheels of the car.

"You might wanna check this out," she replies, her voice showing her concern at what she was looking at.

I look at what she's pointing to and see that all of the wheels have been slashed. I inspect the slashes, and what I find makes me start to freak out.

"Guys, these slashes can't have just happened from us running over glass. These were intentionally created. Which means that someone cut our tires, on purpose. But I have no idea why someone would do that. What do they have to gain from us staying here for a night before we can get towed away?" I start rambling, confusion clouding my thoughts. Confusion at the reasoning behind slashing the tires, and confusion of who would do it. Fear was starting to creep into my mind, that maybe the reason had malicious intent. I check in the back of the truck to see how many spare tires we have, already knowing it won't be enough -I've never carried four spare tires, and I doubt that Davis would- and sure enough when I check, there are no spare tires that I can see.

"Davis, why didn't you pack any tires?" I ask, my voice showing my obvious annoyance at the fact that he didn't think to pack any spare tires in case something happened during our trip -which it now had.

"I thought that it would be fine, I've never had problems with my tires, and we needed space for the suitcases," he reasons, "Anyways, it wouldn't have helped, I would have only packed two tires max."

"I don't know guys, I'm not getting a good feeling about this," Loana says, looking around nervously as if something is about to jump out at her.

"The perpetrator probably hasn't gone far, we should find them and confront them. I'm going to look around for who did this, ok?" I say to the four of them, and Davis jumps up and offers to go with me. I see a pair of footsteps that lead me to the forest. The two of us walk into the forest, and not even two feet in, something glittering shines in the sunlight and the light catches my eye.